


breathing underwater

by erebones



Series: time on her side [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 17:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11605767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: sometimes you need someone to help you stay afloat





	breathing underwater

**Author's Note:**

> The premise, which I don't really get into, is that Chirrut participates in an experimental medical program to partially restore some of her sight. For whatever reason it doesn't take, and she is more upset by it than she anticipated. 
> 
> alternately: I decided it was time for Chirrut to be the one crying, and Baze to be the rock. 
> 
> (also this is in first person because why the fuck not)

She’s sitting on the couch when I get out of the shower, eating ice cream out the container. Her hair is shaved down to the quick; her eyes are red and puffy and unseeing. I can feel my heart crack in half just looking at her, but I don’t let myself follow through. Instead I sit on the floor at her feet and hand her my hairbrush.

“Can you help me?”

There’s a quiet moment of consideration. Then she says, wetly, “Finish this for me.”

I take the tub of ice cream from her. It’s cookie dough, her favorite—it’s been picked over pretty well already, leaving just chocolate chip-studded vanilla ice cream behind, but I tuck in anyway. It’s for her, not for me.

She takes a wad of my tangled hair in one hand with infinite gentleness. She starts from the bottom. Little short strokes, from the tips all the way up to my roots, and not once does she pull hard enough that I flinch. My scalp tingles when she finishes the first section and moves on to the next.

By the time my hair is smooth and glossy-wet, I’ve finished the ice cream and I can hear her softly crying. Chirrut doesn’t cry—hardly ever. It paralyzes me. I sit on the floor with an empty carton of ice cream, my feet tucked under me, and there’s a leaden ball in my stomach pinning me down. Chirrut is still holding on to my hair.

“Sweetheart,” I croak, at a loss.

“Don’t,” Chirrut hiccups. I’m a frozen block of ice until her hands suddenly grip me, fumbling with my shoulders, pulling me upright. Together we heave and shift ourselves, until I am laying against her on the couch, grounding her with my weight. She feels so slight and breakable beneath me. All her years of wing chun seem to melt away when she buries her face in my neck and cries and cries.

“I didn’t know,” I say at last when the tide has been curtailed. Her face is red and puffy, and her nose is running, but when I try to move to get her a tissue she clings to me. A little limpet, frighteningly strong in her frailty. “Baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were so—”

“It’s stupid,” she says thickly. Her voice is so strangled with tears that her accent comes through, just the slightest bit. The rounded consonants she’d worked so hard to shave into sharp American points are blurred with pain. “I knew it wasn’t likely. I knew—I knew.” She chokes on her own words and scrubs her face angrily, until red and purple bloom in the wake of her hands like bruises. I grab her wrists and hold her, just hold her. I kiss her poor, tender eyelids.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Useless, empty words. Nothing I say can fix this. I hate myself for not being able to fix this.

Chirrut wears herself out eventually. Because it’s Chirrut, boundless, overflowing, it takes a while. When she’s done she clings to me like a child, limp and hollowed-out like a cicada who’s left her skin behind, perched on a tree trunk, a mimicry of the real thing. Catatonic.

I do the only thing I know to do: I take care of her.

I get a wet washcloth for her face, pat her dry with my sleeve. I rub her stubbly head and kiss her forehead. I wrap her up in my oldest, rattiest, comfiest hoodie and bundle her into bed.

She lays her head on my shoulder. Her shaved head feels cold still, so I pet it, following the precious curvature of her skull with my palms. Her nose is warm and damp where it presses against the notch of my throat. When she closes her eyes, I feel the kiss of her lashes—ticklish, but I resist the urge to flinch.

“I love you,” I say. It no longer feels like a burden I’m trying to give away. “I love you no matter what, chickadee.”

Chirrut sniffles. “I love you,” she whispers back. Her hand curls under my shirt, up between my breasts to rest against my sternum. It’s not an erotic gesture, but a comforting one. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Stop that.” My voice is a little bit coarse with surprise. I try to smooth it with a kiss to her forehead, one and then another and another—soft, wordless apologies decorating her brow like a crown. “You deserve everything. You deserve the world. I wish I could give it to you.”

Her hand spreads out flat, feeling for my heartbeat. “You do give it to me,” she whispers. “Every day.”

We hold each other like that for a while, until it feels like it’s going to be enough. And then it _is_ enough. I don’t want anyone else in the world but her. I know that this is it. She’s the one. The one I want to fall in love with every day for the rest of my life. Bad news, good news, sickness, health. Whatever trail I’ve found myself on, loving her, I know I’m never coming back.

**Author's Note:**

> chirrut eating cookie dough out of the ice cream is copyrighted to skuun <3


End file.
